How NOT To Network, Get Referrals, And Have Your Resume Reviewed

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all right heading into the office now so had my little nap I'm running a little bit later than I wanted to and I have to get gas um but I'm not running late cuz of the nap I'm just running late because I was like replying to a couple of messages and then I was like crap I really got to get going here um but I also have to get gas so that doesn't help but what I'm going to do is uh I'm just going to clip out that section once the video is uploaded to YouTube I don't edit these at all so um I'm not going to Dismount the camera and hold it and talk you while they pump gas so I'll just clip it out on YouTube um CU you can remove stuff on YouTube you can't add content back in so I'll do

that but I figured um a topic for the drive that would be a good one is um around like reaching out for mentorship and help and referrals and that kind of stuff because um this has been happening more and more and more um and I'm not I want to preface all of this with like this conversation is not intended for me to be complaining about it or talking about it like I'm on a pedestal or anything like that so I want to give you context and then see like like try to get you to think about how to navigate this in an effective way and I'm only one person this is one perspective right so the the framing here is uh people that are looking for jobs or whether like they're you know new to the industry there's a lot of people that are new

they're panicking they're like oh crap like looks like everyone's screwed if they want to be a programmer what am I going to do uh I've had people from uh like students reaching out and they're like they're not even you know they're past their first year uh I've had a couple reach out from where I went to school uh which is supposed to be in Canada like one of the you know like one of the best engineering schools and uh regardless of your view on it's the University of waterly regardless of your view on it they have an internship program so you leave your five-year degree program with two full years of experience not two internships you have six internships and two years of experience and I've had multiple students from from that University reaching out and being like I I don't know what I'm going

to do I feel like I'm screwed and I thought it would be good to kind of talk about this because uh like I'm in a obviously I'm in a position where I'm I'm fortunate I am employed I'm uh at a company that I enjoy working at I get paid well like I have no not like no complaints right um and it's it seems kind of unfair to talk about this kind of thing so that's why I want to say like I I want to preface all of this which is not like oh like stop reaching out to me like don't bother me um it's more like I I see I do see what's happening and I I want to make sure that I can provide some perspective and tips even for like people that are going through like how do I get referrals or like

how do I Network effectively that kind of thing um so hopefully that helps uh the other part that I want to mention is like um when I talk about myself in this context I'm going to be making it very clear like I'm busy but I don't mean like hey I'm too busy for you because I'm better than you I mean I'm busy because I fill my plate with too many things to do so um when I have people that reach out and they're like hey do this for me um sometimes even if I really wanted to like I just don't have capacity it's a personal thing for me where I take on too many things and then things start to fall apart and I've talked about this in videos before um when I get completely overwhelmed I have signs signs that tell me that and

one of the examples that I've shared before is like something as simple as taking vitamins right um every morning I go down to where my caffeine is and I make my caffeine drink so that I can wake up the vitamins are literally on the same sh shelf as the caffeine and the flavoring that I use there's no excuse and I find that when I'm overwhelmed taking on too many things like getting burnt out from it um something as simple as just like taking my vitamins like it becomes like insurmountable like I just stopped doing it and I'm sharing this because if you layer on like someone just like out of the blue messaging me being like hey like review my resume not only is it kind of weird like you wouldn't do that to a random person on the street um but like I genuinely

want to help people and most of the time I'm operating with my plate so full that like I'm dropping other things so for someone to say hey like just review my resume like I don't have time for it not because I'm better or whatever I don't have time for it because I'm already dropping other things on the ground so that's what I wanted to clarify to give you an example as I'm building out brand ghost with some of my my peers um the amount of work that I'm putting into coding means that I don't write blog posts anymore I want to write blog posts I haven't written them in months aside from my newsletter so that's one example of I had to cut something out that was conscious but there are other things that drop on the ground um the the Audi that's sitting in

the driveway was supposed to go for an oil change but the battery is dead and it's so dead that it doesn't like it doesn't register on the trickle charger anymore like it's had a trickle charger hooked up to it so now I have to go take it out and I have this thing that I have to go do and schedule time for it um and like that's you know that's one more thing to pile on and it's going to make other things kind of fall off um you know washing this car my wife uh is adamant that I don't take care of I need to wash it she's right I do need to wash it but like it's just it's one more thing I have to get around to doing so um when people are doing this kind of reach out I just want you

to keep in mind that like you know there's people on the other side um you might be looking at the job title or the post or the years of experience or whatever you're looking at but please just remember there's people on the other side and like for me like I keep saying it's not that I'm I'm busy because I'm better like I'm too busy for you I'm too busy for me and that's already a problem so that's my my kind of rant on that stuff uh I'm going to start talking about my thoughts around reach out the gas station right here when I make this turn so I might lose my train of thought but um yeah I I want to say that I absolutely genuinely encourage people to be networking online um as early as you're comfortable doing it I think LinkedIn is a

great spot for it I know some people depending on what social media platforms you use like oh like LinkedIn is crap like it's the people on there suck people say the same thing about Twitter um I think it's important to be networking and it's going to look different for everyone and we have this opportunity to be networking and I think we should be taking advantage of it so it's the first thought on networking but I'm going to have to cut the video here because I don't have gas okay so we are literally living in this time where it's so easy to be networking and people are so accessible doesn't mean that anyone you reach out to is automatically going to be like best friends with you or anything like that but I just mean like you can go online and you can message people right

you can interact with people it's pretty cool so the reason I think people should be taking advantage of networking is because the other sort of strategy especially from like a um you know trying to at least land an interview right is um is like a volume approach and like if you think about it statistically uh I was trying to explain this to someone the other day like let's say you want a candidate that are like so you're a candidate and there's another candidate you're both literally ex you see you write the same resume you have the same experience as everything right you're identical in every way and you apply to 10 jobs per week and let's say you're applying to the same same places and all that okay we apply to 10 jobs per week and they apply to 100 they literally have a 10x

better chance of Landing a job doesn't mean like maybe your resume was bad or whatever like I'm not trying to say that automatically their's moves up I'm just saying statistically they're taking more chances now I understand that for some people this starts to feel uncomfortable because you're like well I can't think of a 100 companies or whatever like it doesn't have to be that like it could be job positions at the same company like it's there's that's a whole other conversation to kind of go into but my point is that one way to be trying to get ahead is to be applying more it's just like a a numbers game so that's one part and like if that feels kind of icky to you like I get it because it feels kind of icky to me too um for whatever reason the sort of the

like a parallel that comes to mind for me is like dating right it's like oh well just go you know message more girls or more guys depending on you know your interest but like that seems like disingenuine but at the same time it's like I have to realize it's not the same as dating we're talking about people having a career here so anyway that's like one of the reasons it feels kind of icky to me is just because that always pops into my head it's like ah that doesn't feel quite right but statistically it's better odds so I do encourage that people do that um trying to move that mic down a little bit so I'm not screaming into it the um the other side of this though is like so you have this volume game that you're playing so more and more applications just

statistically better likelihood what else can you be doing right and I I'll always be telling people like hey be building projects be practicing like that so that that holds true here that's not the focus here the focus is going to be networking networking is the other thing that you can and should be doing while you're trying to blast out a better like a higher volume of res and I think that people should be doing this I think you should be networking the the difference though or what I would recommend and how I would like to reframe this for people is that people seem to get the idea of like okay let me blast my resume out to to more jobs and that's a quick thing right you can go applying for Stuff um there's easy apply stuff like on LinkedIn whatever like there's lots of

options to do that in volume and it's simple this person in front of me is going below the speed limit in the fast lane because they see other people in the slower Lanes breaking I'm going to get mad um so when it comes to networking though I think people still try to look at look at it through the same lens like well they said to network what's the fastest way that I can just network with people what's the fast fastest way to do that and the thing that I want to reframe for you is like this tactic is in my opinion literally the exact opposite approach to blasting your resume out so instead of saying okay someone on the internet told me I better Network I'm going to go start sending out as many connection requests on LinkedIn as I can I'm going to start

spamming people's inboxes with like hey please review my resume uh or please refer me like it my opinion this is the exact wrong way to do it and it's because they are different tactics you already have a tactic that you're employing that's going to be to blast out your resume to more job applications that's the volume game that's the the easy one that's the just go blast it out approach when it comes to networking I think you want to be the other way you want to be a lot uh more like what's the word I want to use like refined in your approach not that you shouldn't be applying to jobs you don't want to work at but like you shouldn't just go pick you know as many connection requests as you can and go blast uh blast them out just because you're trying to

maximize the connections that you can get on LinkedIn you shouldn't be just trying to send as many messages as you can um you could be sitting here going well Nick I thought you said it's a volume game and like sure the difference is that these require interactions for them to be suc uccessful the volume game for your resume applying to a job you've already done the work you have already done the work you could argue that you should be tailoring your resume and that's absolutely uh possible like depending on what you're applying for maybe you need to tweak some things to make it stand out more so certainly but the amount of effort to be able to just achieve more volume with blasting out a resume in my opinion is significantly lower when it comes to networking if you take a canned message and DM

it to 100 people I just feel like you're going to have most of those people be like hell no like I don't want to deal with whatever this person is talking about and instead if you just like spend time trying to literally build up like a network communicate with people engage with people be genuine with people you'll find that it's going to be slower you might not get as many connections on LinkedIn as fast like you're not the goal isn't to game that number because what you're not able to measure on LinkedIn or other platforms is like the meaningfulness of those connections okay so the reason I want to frame this for you is like let's say someone sends me a message and I've never talked to them before never engage with them ever they've just sent me a message on LinkedIn because my I

have a premium profile and you can do that and their message is basically like Hi here's who I am and like can you give me a referral to Microsoft I've already told you from like personally like I just don't have capacity to do that that's one thing the other thing is with referrals I refuse to refer people unless I've work with them because I always look at referrals as like my name is associated with that and if it's a random person I don't I literally do not know if I uh feel comfortable with that person I don't know them so if we change the example and it's not a referral it's like hey can you review my resume okay like I want to help people I'm still in that position like like I don't got time I don't got time for myself so when I

get an opening message like this from someone that I don't know I'm automatically not interested often I just like you know I ignore the connection request I just leave the the in message on LinkedIn like unread like I just I don't have time or capacity for it and you know what I can tell they're playing the volume game with their Reach Out they'll find someone else will do it right like I can sit back and not worry because someone else will eventually respond to that and whatever the point is that person actually doesn't care about connecting with me they don't care because if they did care they wouldn't be approaching it that way if they want to connect and engage they would be trying to have a conversation with me they'd be curious they'd be asking questions that weren't do this for me right the

the takeaway from this little part here is like when you're framing stuff if you like you wouldn't go up to a stranger on the street and just ask them to go do something for you you could go ask a friend of yours you could call up a friend and say hey man like could you do this for me and odds are they will because they're your friend but a stranger depends what the thing is maybe maybe they won't um so the point is like without building the relationship when you start asking for things doesn't go so well it's just not a good approach this truck there's no one in front why are you like this it's ridiculous okay one sec I need some water because I'm starting to die oh there's a car in front of this truck this it's this car holding everyone up

I I need two cameras in here one that I can point forward what is this fluff on here get out um yeah I need to point a camera forward so you can see how terrible some of these people are driving it's great um I mean it's a little bit damp outside so no one knows how to drive even though it's Seattle so I guess there's an excuse okay so I'm telling you all the things that I don't like right like don't go spamming people don't use canned messages um don't be asking for something in your first message and again the the point of that was like you haven't built up a relationship to be able to ask for things so I I mean this when I say it that I get a lot of enjoyment out of helping people so if I can offer advice

if I can review someone's resume if I like those interactions make me feel good so I like doing them but again I am busy I I'm too busy for myself so like if I don't know you and you're putting yourself in a position where you're demonstrating to me that like you you sent this message out to whoever like whoever is like if I'm reading it there's probably 99 other people reading it like that just tells me that like like why should I be putting my time into you if you if you're if you don't care um so I feel used in that situation which I don't like to feel used I don't think many of us do so what do I suggest right like how can we turn this around and there's been a couple of times like I've I've talked to two students from

the University of waterl the the last one was yesterday actually and they were they asked for something but they don't ask for um it's not a referral it's not review my resume it's it's like hey like I can tell it's it's sent to me it's not sent to everyone because they're they're writing about me they're writing about something that they read that I've said or they read about my experience and they're being curious right they're being relatable they're saying things like hey like I also went to the same school as you uh you know your career Journeys look pretty interesting like going from X to y or just calling something out that I know that they were they were basically reading or engaging with something that I've done okay so I immediately know this person wants to talk to me not they want to talk

to anyone who will open their message makes a big difference so I know this person already spent some time trying to make sure that they could talk with me so that kind of feels good to me and I know if they've invested some time that if I were to invest my own time that I don't feel like I'm being cheated here right I don't feel like I'm being taken advantage of so that's one thing and the other part that I mentioned is that they're not they're not like hey like you know I here's something relatable like we went to the same school career journey is interesting can you give me a referral they're not asking for something that's going to um it's not like a what's the word so referral for me is a it's a hard know if I don't know you so it's

already kind of ruled out but the can you review my resume thing sometimes I might sometimes but the reason I don't love that is because I still feel like someone I don't want to say is taking advantage of me I feel like they're just trying to get one thing out of me right like hey can you review this and like see see you never and then and then it's not networking to me like I want to be able to network so um and other people will be different about this right I'm not trying to say this is the only way but for a couple of individuals that I thought it's worked really well is that they said like I know your time is limited and they have their own perception of that I'm like I said my time are limited just because I do too

many things that I probably shouldn't be doing but um they acknowledge it they're trying to be conscious of my time and they've they've said would it be okay to have a chat for like 15 minutes now I know because I do a bunch of interviews and chats you don't have 15minute chats it doesn't happen right a chat is never 15 minutes maybe other people are able to kind of get it together in 15 minutes but I don't think you can talk about a whole lot in 15 minutes to make it meaningful so I'm generally more open to this kind of thing if my schedule allows it because if my schedule's already full it's like hey yeah you can book it but it's going to be out and it kind of starts to lose the meaningfulness but in these cases I've let them know like hey

here's my link you can go book something it's it's slotted for 30 minutes so I already know like 15 minutes isn't going to cut it and um the reason I like to do this is because if they're willing to go go invest more time right this is the thing they're investing more of their time into me because they're going to have a conversation with me and I don't know if I've just been very fortunate or statistically it's an outlier but the individuals that I've talked to like this I I told my wife this last night I'm going to call them kids it's not really fair maybe I'll try I don't want to call them kids um they're students right they're younger they're they're very Junior early they're not even in their career yet so these these students are doing like they're going so far above

and beyond it's like it's nuts in a good way like it's so impressive and I have no idea if any of them will ever watch this but statistically the people I've gotten onto calls like this have been so impressive and sorry this part of the highway is really crappy it's the part where I have to go merge over all the lanes from the fast lane and what's really neat is when I'm having these conversations with them so it's it's a 30 minute conversation when I'm picking up on all of the stuff they're doing all the ways that they're investing into themselves to get better I go you know I'm I'm happy that I'm on the call with this person like this is a kind of person who um they work hard they do things they're putting a lot of effort in they're not here to

mess around they're not here to just like you know what's the what's the shortcut they're here because they're trying to genuinely you know um invest in themselves and when I say that I don't mean to imply that other people that are doing like the shotgun blast approach to just go Um send stuff out everywhere like they they don't care but like to give you an example like these people are that I've been talking with they'll be talking about like the extracurricular stuff they're doing is like helping startup companies or uh or doing hackathons like they're filling all of their time with just stuff that will hopefully align with like software engineering and help them get ahead and they're interested in it so for me I look at that and I'm like cool like now I feel like the tables turn and I I want to

be honest about this right like they were coming to me because they wanted help they wanted help with something and I get it that's fine so I'm kind of in the like position of power like okay let me impart some wisdom and whatever but when they start to demonstrate to me all these awesome things they're doing it turns the tables for me because I start to look at it like wow this person I know like this person is going to be so successful in their career I can already tell tell if they're doing all this stuff and they keep it up they will be so successful and I look at it like I can't wait to be a small part of this person's Journey so the the dynamic changes we now I'm interested where I'm like hell yeah like this person's got it cool like

um I might be this far ahead of my career only because I've been in my career for for over a decade longer than them like just like it's a time thing and I'm looking at where they're at and I'm going man they're going to be they're going to Excel for sure and like I said I want to be part of that so like even yesterday the 15minute phone call turned into an hour and 15 minutes right because you know if they have questions they want to keep going and it's helpful like hell yeah um now those phone calls also offer me the opportunity where if um if I get onto that call if someone if I feel like I'm being taken advantage of or whatever um or you know they're not getting the value out of it then I can I can end it you

know the 15 the 30 minute Mark whatever it happens to be like you only had a couple questions cool um if I don't see a lot coming out of it cool but you got what you wanted okay like no you know whatever happy to help glad it helped move on get my time back but um yeah like statistically the way the these calls have gone has been um it's been quite the opposite where I'm you know I'm hanging around the call for way over double the time so um the I guess the recommendation that I have here is like I think that I think that I value the the the relationship building a lot more than just being able to have someone send me a PDF and I go okay here's my critique right because then what like I'm I'm glad I helped you it's

just it's just my opinion right I'm not I'm not the dictator of resumés it's just an opinion and you can go get that opinion from a bunch of different people but if we can actually you know connect and we can uh build a lasting relationship like to me that's way more interesting I'm more interested in that kind of opportunity selfishly because I feel good about that so both well at least there are at least two people that's what I'll say there at least two people that have been on calls like this where they've asked me at the end of the call do you think that we could do this again like could I schedule more time with you and I have said to at least two people like yes please please do um and you know one of the one of the guys that I

first started doing this with with uh sends me updates periodically about the stuff that he's working on and it's it's awesome it's like it's so impressive um and now like because of our interactions because he didn't just reach out and shotgun blast his generic can approach now we get to have like this cool working relationship I don't know if it's like a mentorship maybe it is um where you know I can see what he's up to he can ask for advice and I I know that he's like invested in keeping that going so that's just been my experience but I I recommend that um you don't frame your your reach out as in like I need something from you um in this case both of these individuals needed time frame me they did ask for time so that kind of goes against what I'm saying

but um if you're hesitant about this kind of thing I would say just start with being curious ask people questions about the stuff they're writing online or their experience be genuinely curious you don't have to get them to review your resume or take you on as a mentee um in your first message right like you could be and you should be doing this over days weeks months and just building genuine relationships I think that you'll have a much better success rate doing that kind of thing on the relationship building side your reach out side um and if you balance that with the higher volume in applications you kind of are attacking it on two different fronts now to kind of go back and compare these things the the application blasting that's kind of like a temporary thing right like you're only doing that while you're

searching for your job the networking part is something that can be like can and probably should be going on for forever right you you don't just do it and then you land your job and you're like ohol guess I never have to talk to these people again I mean if that's how you feel about it it's probably not like a good like a good relationship ship like why wouldn't you want to find people in the industry that you're like excited to go talk to um maybe there's a future opportunity where they have openings at their company or you can work together on something like why wouldn't you keep these things going right so I just I think they serve different purposes they have a different time Horizon a different level of investment both can and I would say should be used for applying to jobs

so for me even like I'm not looking for a job but I have a network of people now that if I found myself in that position I at least would have a place to start right I I wouldn't have to go oh I guess I guess I have to go make a LinkedIn account like no I have a bunch of people that I'm connected with that I could go start talking to and has nothing to do with the fact that I'm a Creator I had before I was creating content I had my LinkedIn account for this kind of thing um so it's like it's like no excuse right you can be doing this but it goes yeah the the connection building in your network that is a much longer time Horizon than just your current job search that's what I wanted to to kind of

add in here I'm going to park in this spot oh yeah it's a good spot it's my favorite spot I think in the whole garage this is the spot I parked in the other day and you can't see how I'm backing into this spot but I am over the edge of this spot okay on purpose and I'm doing this because now when I open my door it's a coupe door it's long when I open it not going to hit anything there's no one parked beside me too but when someone inevitably Parks beside me there's space cuz they're going to park between the lines unless they were the last person that just decided they will park well over the line I I I can't make this stuff up it's just ridiculous but anyway to work and I will uh see you on the drive home take

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